Editing Encyclopedia:Historical archive/Policy/Approval mechanism (section)

==== Establishing Quality Assurance ====

The release edition depends on votes. It also may lead to the perception that there is a fork, or create confusion about multiple wikipedias.  A more "wiki" way of doing things would be to have only one release version, but allow anyone to rate any version. This system exploits version control to give users the ability to know who has "certified" a version.  

So if I know that revision 01.22.2005.10:33 of an article has been certified by User:Authority, User:Hobbyist and User:Professional, I may trust it more than an article certified by User:Vandal or User:Random.

Users who want to influence what other people read will need to establish credibility.  Real world information helps here, as well as within-Wikipedia credibility.
 
Given the potential number of Users who might certifiy an article, and the likelihood I have never heard of most of them, users should be allowed to join certification "clubs" (or rather "clubs" should be allowed to include members, through a process like [[Wikipedia:Requests_for_adminship]]). There might be a group who certifies articles on [[biology]], and another group that certifies articles on [[astronomy]], and so on. There could be multiple clubs who certify articles (biology and astronomy might both certify an article on [[exobiology]]. There might be more than one astronomy club, if there are differences, and good articles would be certified by both, and controversial articles by only one. Clubs could team, so if Club:Biology and Club:Astronomy trusted each other, they would be part of a Team (say Team:Science) (and of course there might be multiple teams certifying the same article, or different versions, which would ultimately need to be hashed out in a wiki way or would stand).
 
If club members went off the reservation so to speak, and certified rubbish, they could be kicked out of the club, and they would no longer be able to speak for the club (there certifications would no longer hold the club imprimatur). (similarly clubs could be kicked out of teams).

The important thing is that no one is requiring that only credentialed individuals be permitted to certify an article, but that if they do, users can of their own free will give that more credance than an uncredentialed person certifying the article.

Does this make wikipedia more complicated? Yes of course it does. 

Does this make wikipedia more reliable? Yes, as you would now know who thought what was accurate.

===== Additions to MediaWiki required by this =====
 
* A way of tracking who certified each version, 
* A way of tracking who was in what club (and what club was in what team).  
* A certification history of articles. 
* At the top of the page it would notify me if there was a more recent uncertified version of the article, or the most recent version of the article certified by Team:X or Club:Y. 
* A certification or approval tab. 
* The ability to view only articles approved by Team:X, Club:Y, or User:Z. (This could be done like categories, but there is probably a better mechanism) 
* The ability to see Recent Approvals.

 
[[User:DavidLevinson|dml]] 17:09, 22 Jan 2005 (UTC)


[[User:DavidLevinson|dml]]